, RITUAL, AND RELIGION.

CHAPTER I. SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY.

Definitions of religion--Contradictory evidence--"Belief in spiritual
beings"--Objection to Mr. Tylor's definition--Definition as regards
this argument--Problem: the contradiction between religion and myth--Two
human moods--Examples--Case of Greece--Ancient mythologists--Criticism
by Eusebius--Modern mythological systems--Mr. Max Muller--Mannhardt.

The word "Religion" may be, and has been, employed in many different
senses, and with a perplexing width of significance. No attempt to
define the word is likely to be quite satisfactory, but almost any
definition may serve the purpose of an argument, if the writer who
employs it states his meaning frankly and adheres to it steadily. An
example of the confusions which may arise from the use of the term
"religion" is familiar to students. Dr. J. D. Lang wrote concerning the
native races of Australia: "They have nothing whatever of the character
of religion, or of religious observances, to distinguish them from the
beasts that perish". Yet in the same book Dr. Lang published evidence
assigning to the natives belief in "Turramullun, the chief of demons,
who is the author of disease, mischief and wisdom".(1) The belief in
a superhuman author of "disease, mischief and wisdom" is certainly
a religious belief not conspicuously held by "the beasts"; yet all
religion was denied to the Australians by the very author who prints
(in however erroneous a style) an account of part of their creed. This
writer merely inherited the old missionary habit of speaking about the
god of a non-Christian people as a "demon" or an "evil spirit".

(1) See Primitive Culture, second edition, i. 419.

Dr. Lang's negative opinion was contradicted in testimony published by
himself, an appendix by the Rev. Mr. Ridley, containing evidence of
the belief in Baiame. "Those who have learned that 'God' is the name by
which we speak of the Creator, say that Baiame is God."(1)

(1) Lang's Queensland, p. 445, 1861.

As "a minimum definition of religion," Mr. Tylor has suggested "the
belief in spiritual beings". Against this it may be urged that, while we
have no definite certainty that any race of men is destitute of belief
in spiritual beings, yet certain moral and creative deities of low races
do not seem to be envisaged as "spiritual" at all. They are regarded
as EXISTENCES, as BEINGS, unconditioned by Time, Space, or Death, and
nobody